January 2016 Notes

January FTX will commence at 0900 on the 23rd and run thru 1600 on the 24th at Training Area North. This is our first FTX of the year and so we will be going over equipment and training standards. We need to finish our refresher training on Rural Ops and move on with other training this spring.

We did meet for a Christmas dinner here locally and that went better than anticipated. Normally, due to everyone’s busy schedule, there isn’t a scheduled event in December. In light of the many current events both here and abroad, that needs to change.

David has started an initiative to raise some funds for Mike Vanderboegh. All of us in the Militia and Patriot community are benefiting from the hard work of Mike (and David). PayPal link in the story here. We will be sending some this week. Mike has slowly been losing his fight against cancer yet still has a lot of initiatives in progress around the country. And if any of you know a good editor (and yes, I’m looking at you guys that have published books), Mike could really use one to finally get his book, “Absolved“, into print and circulation. Maybe an illustrator, too.

Interesting items to study in your off time:

When you visit their website, one of the many books they sell is called Guerilla Gardening for Long Term Survival, that discusses how to make a garden for long term survival needs yet make it hard to be found by those roving bands of hungry Zombies in the Post-SHTF times.

We are lucky to be in a region of the U.S. where we have so many similarly sized and oriented Militias and Patriot groups that are starting to work together and share ideas on, for example, inter-operability in communications.

Don’t remember this being covered in CERT training but this FEMA Building Search Markings videocovers it pretty well. And knowing how to write these marking could be a useful skill someday.

Locally, more or less, Guilford County Sherriff’s Office adopted the Yellow Dot Program from someplace in Connecticut and it seems to be getting the support of the Greensboro City Police. The Yellow Dot program is a method of making critical medical and contact information quickly available to EMS when they show up and say, “Wow! What happened to him?” To use this program, you can download the pdf file and fill in the blanks. Then you keep the form in your cars glovebox and put a round yellow dot sticker on your side window, or put the form on the refrigerator (with a fridge magnet) in your house and put the round yellow dot sticker on your front door. Looks useful anyway. PDF of Yellow Dot form here.

A similar device, called the GO>ID Tag, is demonstrated over at ITS Tactical. Comes in three sizes and can be securely attached to about anywhere on your person where hopefully the Emergency Responders can quickly find it. Looks useful anyway.

Two stories from earlier this year from Red Team Journal, both about some companies efforts at data security and how it was a good thing they sought outside assessment of their security systems. The bottom line from both stories:

“So with those two stories, I present to you Red Team Rule #51. Your adversary has the benefit of looking at your organizational defenses and asking itself “how can we defeat these”. You don’t have the luxury of money, time, or personnel to look at their attacks and ask yourself, “how can we defend against these”. The red teamer will always just come up with something else.”

And, just to start the year off on the right foot, here is a recently released document via PublicIntelligence: DHS Report on Violent Militias. It’s little surprising this report is pretty vague and wanders in many places.

(U//FOUO) Violent militia extremist units conduct a range of paramilitary training. Field training exercises often are held on a militia member’s private property, in national parks, and at other undisclosed locations. Violent militia extremist groups often engage in joint field training exercises with like-minded groups from other states. Training topics include wilderness survival, marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, fire-and-maneuver drills, and small-unit tactics. Some militia group members have demonstrated proficiency in using firearms, operating heavy weapons, and constructing improvised armored vehicles. Violent militia extremists also post videos on the Internet that depict and advocate violent acts, training scenarios, antigovernment conspiracies, and a wide range of survival skills.

And the release is timed to go with …….

“Everything begins with intelligence.”

Undoubtedly, you’ve been keeping up with developments at the occupation of Malheur Wildlife Sanctuary out in Burns, Oregon. It is somewhat of a complicated story that has serious implications for us here, no matter how or when it plays out. There are many with opinions both pro and con on this incident, but a similar historical point to remember is from way back in 1963, when Jack Kennedy was in West Berlin making that speech near the Berlin Wall, where he said, “Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen”, a remark pointed at those who kept saying they could work with the Communists thru deals and treaties, to “let them come here” and see first hand how that was a plan for an amazing level of failure that many would not live through. Fifty years ago, the wall that went up and split up a city, is now effectively here in this country, and it looks like we’re on the inside of this one. Burns, Oregon is but just one little town where the people who see the wall have grown tired of pretending it’s not there.

Most recently is a story from D.C. Clothsline, where one of the local chaps from the Burns area went out to see for himself what was really going on out at the wildlife refuge.

The lessons to be learned here are many and this is one of those rare opportunities to watch this development in Oregon with an eye towards concepts that could one day be useful here locally. This is one of those exercises in resistance to tyranny that we will be talking about for some time.

And here is the link to send your support, thru Carol Bundy, to those guys occupying the wildlife refuge out in Oregon. Carol has made an extensive list of items (beyond just money) that can be put to immediate use. There might also be a legal fund starting up. Will post that link later.

Supplemental Notes:

This is the link to a story by NCScout that speaks to both the events unfolding out in Oregon and to us in the trenches here. It is undoubtedly the best story that’s come out yet, not for the details on what’s happening in Oregon, but how to see what’s all going on surrounding those events. Learning all we can from the actual events and the 4GW aspect of those events is a rare and priceless opportunity.